Let's start by conceding the point the bill's critics will make, because it's a fair one. Parts of the Abuse of the Pardon Prevention Act probably can't survive a court challenge. The pardon power in Article II is sweeping, and Congress can't simply legislate it into a smaller box. The constitutional answer to a president who abuses it is impeachment.
But that answer has become a punchline. It asks us to rely on a Republican-controlled Congress to impeach a Republican president for selling mercy. Telling voters that the remedy is already in the Constitution is like telling someone whose house is burning that the fire code is excellent.
The abuse itself is not hypothetical. Changpeng Zhao, the Binance founder, pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an anti-money-laundering program at the world's largest crypto exchange. He was pardoned after Binance became entangled in the financial orbit of the Trump family's crypto ventures. Maybe that's coincidence. But a president who profits from crypto and then forgives a crypto convict has built a conflict of interest and called it a constitutional prerogative. Bribery appears in the Constitution as an impeachable offense. The Framers worried specifically about a president who might use the pardon to shield his own circle and corrupt the machinery of justice.
The White House says every clemency request is reviewed by the counsel's office, the Justice Department, pardon adviser Alice Johnson and the president. That's a description of a process, not a defense of its integrity. Every link in that chain answers to the man who benefits from the outcome. Review by people who serve at his pleasure is not an independent check.
And here's what the lawyers and lobbyists understand: clemency now has a market. Ordinary prisoners with sympathetic stories send petitions into a bureaucratic void. The wealthy and connected hire the right intermediaries and take the side door. A pardon that arrives through a donor, a lobbyist or a friend of the family is not mercy. It's a luxury service. Most people in federal prison will never be able to afford it.
That's why the provisions most likely to hold up matter most. An inspector general review of clemency grants with possible conflicts of interest is oversight, not a constraint on the power itself. Requiring recipients to disclose gifts to presidential projects is sunlight. Neither tells a president whom he may forgive. They only tell the public who paid, who asked and who benefited. If the pardon power is as pure as the White House says, it should survive a little daylight.
Democrats also need to be honest about their own record, because Republicans will bring it up the moment this bill gets attention. Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich was a stain. Joe Biden's pardon of his son, after promising he wouldn't issue it, handed Republicans a gift and weakened the moral claim of every Democrat who now speaks about equal justice. If this bill is going to mean anything, its backers should say clearly that it applies to presidents of both parties, including the ones they voted for.
The bill is unlikely to become law in this Congress. Fine. Legislation can also be a case made to the public. It tells voters what Democrats would do with power: expose the market in mercy, make presidents answer for transactional clemency, and treat a self-pardon as the monarchical claim it is. A party that wants to be trusted on corruption has to put its proposals in writing before the next scandal, and then be willing to enforce them.
The pardon power was written for mercy, not for a system where access to the president decides who goes free. If Republicans think the current system is clean, they should have no objection to proving it.
